“I do assure you, sir,” says Mr. George, “not to say it offensively, that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am being smothered fifty times over.  I really am, sir.  I am not a match for you gentlemen.  Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain’s hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?”

Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head.  “No.  If you were a man of business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such wants in the profession to which I belong.  But if you are afraid of doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest about that.”

“Aye!  He is dead, sir.”

“Is he?” Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.

“Well, sir,” says the trooper, looking into his hat after another disconcerted pause, “I am sorry not to have given you more satisfaction.  If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to consult with him.  I—­I really am so completely smothered myself at present,” says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his brow, “that I don’t know but what it might be a satisfaction to me.”

Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper’s taking counsel with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him.  Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing either way.

“I’ll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir,” says the trooper, “and I’ll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer in the course of the day.  Mr. Smallweed, if you wish to be carried downstairs—­”

“In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment.  Will you first let me speak half a word with this gentleman in private?”

“Certainly, sir.  Don’t hurry yourself on my account.”  The trooper retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise.

“If I wasn’t as weak as a brimstone baby, sir,” whispers Grandfather Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry eyes, “I’d tear the writing away from him.  He’s got it buttoned in his breast.  I saw him put it there.  Judy saw him put it there.  Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say you saw him put it there!”

This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with him, until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken.